Seven years in Waziristan

The pub­lic eye has turned on Waziris­tan once again, that famed, fabled and feared tribal region between Pak­istan and Afghanistan. In my for­ma­tive years, I was never informed about Waziris­tan, never even heard of it to be quite hon­est, and in the media the area is pre­sented as if we are speak­ing of an exo-planet or another extremely remote colony — whereas it has of course been here dur­ing all that time, we just hap­pened to pay no par­tic­u­lar atten­tion. As it turns out, it is not with­out risk to for­get for­ma­tive episodes in his­tory, and Waziris­tan really has quite an impres­sive his­tory of war and ‘con­flicts’, as they are called nowa­days. These Waziris­tani wars, often fought with the British colo­nial pow­ers, are now com­ing back to haunt us, which makes the ghost-like image of a tank — such a sym­bol of mod­ern war­fare — all the more omi­nous. This, too, can be the power of pho­tog­ra­phy. But there is more omi­nos­ity — to coin the word — to be encoun­tered in the 1935–1936 Raz­mak album of gen­eral U.C. Dubey, who fought for the British and was sta­tioned in the region for seven years.

The cap­tion of this lately quite top­i­cal and not all that his­tor­i­cal look­ing image reads thus: “a typ­i­cal Waziri tribesman in a happy mood, with his loaded rifle, knife and chap.” A happy mood?

Despite being not that exten­sive, the Raz­mak col­lec­tion from the Aditya Arya Archive does con­tain imagery that could have been as renowned as Roger Fenton’s, had it not been of one of these ‘for­got­ten’ wars, of which there are far too many on this planet.

6 thoughts on “Seven years in Waziristan”

You have a print of this? That’s amaz­ing! As far as I can tell based on stu­pid Google research, the pho­tographs from the album are all cour­tesy of gen­eral Dubey. In the arti­cle I linked to, it speaks of a col­lec­tion made by him of snaps taken by army pho­tog­ra­phers. So maybe it was your father who took it. Maybe it was given to him by a mate? I assume he is no longer around to ask. The mys­tery might remain for now.

Thank you, James. I see that the orig­i­nal album from gen­eral Dubey is no longer view­able online at the Indian Archive, pos­si­bly because it has since been pub­lished as a book. It’s a pity, as this album had some really intense images that went beyond the purely reg­is­tra­tive func­tion of sou­venir pho­tographs. If you google the Ramzak Album you can find it eas­ily. Here is a story on the man him­self, mr. Dubey, who was a cen­te­nar­ian in 2009, but passed away shortly after: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?240101

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It sounds a bit dry per­haps, but I guess that’s because this pro­gram wants to appeal to the aca­d­e­m­i­cally inclined among the cura­tors? In any case, it’s an afford­able oppor­tu­nity for young cura­tors with over three years of work­ing expe­ri­ence. Dead­line com­ing up March 20th!

“Fol­low­ing ICI’s Cura­to­r­ial Inten­sive in Addis Ababa with the Zoma Con­tem­po­rary Art Cen­ter (ZCAC) in 2014, and in Johan­nes­burg with The Bag Fac­tory Artists’ Stu­dios in 2013, ICI con­tin­ues its com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing cura­to­r­ial train­ing in Africa, and to devel­op­ing regional net­works, with the Cura­to­r­ial Inten­sive in Mar­rakech. The pro­gram will focus on the cul­tural land­scape of West Africa and the Maghreb while also explor­ing the role of cura­tors work­ing for both local and inter­na­tional audi­ences. The sem­i­nars of this pro­gram will be con­ducted mostly in Eng­lish, but also in Ara­bic and French. Trans­la­tion will be avail­able when nec­es­sary, but work­ing pro­fi­ciency in Eng­lish is essen­tial and famil­iar­ity with more than one lan­guage is rec­om­mended. “

George Arbid, King­dom of Bahrain National Par­tic­i­pa­tion, Bien­nale di Venezia 2014Fundamentalists and Other Arab Modernisms.Architecture from the Arab World 1914–2014 Bahrain Min­istry of Cul­ture, Bahrain; Arab Cen­tre for Archi­tec­ture, Beirut

Ste­fano Graziani pointed me to a Call for Cap­tions by the Cana­dian Cen­tre for Archi­tec­ture (CCA), an inter­est­ing premise also with a view on the cur­rent debates sur­rounded the lat­est WPP awards:

“We’re inter­ested in how cap­tions influ­ence the way we read pho­tographs. Cap­tions can cloud and clar­ify. They can attack an image or stand apart, appar­ently neu­tral and trans­par­ent. They might seem tran­quil, but can be fraught. They are def­i­nitely rela­tional things. They involve an inter­ac­tion, and we think the best way to con­tinue to think about cap­tions is to invite you to join a con­ver­sa­tion with us.“

Mon­treal weather reports tell me it’s cold out­side… but you can stay warm at the open­ing of the Art Souter­rain fes­ti­val tonight, where Stead Bureau cos­mo­naut Mari Bas­ta­shevski takes you on a tour through the very spe­cial realm of state sur­veil­lance in inter­net hyper­space. And to cel­e­brate this happy occa­sion, let’s remem­ber the cheer­ful lyrics of the Red Dwarf theme song!

I’ll pack my bags and head into hyper­spaceWhere I’ll suc­ceed at time-warp speedSpend my days in ultra­vi­o­let raysFun, fun, fun, In the sun, sun, sun.

We’ll lock on course straight through the uni­verseYou and me and the galaxyReach the stage where hyper-drive’s engagedFun, fun, fun, In the sun, sun, sun,Fun, fun, fun, In the sun, sun, sun. … See MoreSee Less